Tuesday, March 19, 2013

AI War Beta 6.013 "Core Foamhammer" Released!

This one adds Core (MkV) versions of the 18 fleet ships that previously maxed out at MkIV. So you can now get those from Core Fabricators. Abuse of Core Shield Bearers may result in... well, I guess you don't have much to fear if you have Core Shield Bearers.

The bulk of this release answers the results of the recent nerfpolls with significant hammerings handed out all around.

Gravity won the AI-side poll and came in second on the human-side. Since the universal gravitational constant laughed at us when we tried to nerf it, we instead nerfed the units trying to use said gravity. Except the player home forcefield grav-generator, that's still just as nasty as it was.

Manufactories won the Player-side poll. Yea, the things that convert metal to crystal and vice versa when you ask them to. The player sentiment wasn't that these were overpowered (that would have been kind of amusing) but that they were unnecessary. Why have them be physical structures with automated turn-on/turn-off logic when the game could just handle the conversion automatically? Normally we wouldn't have prioritized this, but the poll told us it was important to the players, so it's been done. The foam hammer hit the Manufactories so hard that they don't exist anymore, and the conversion is now done on an as-needed basis (there's still a control you can use to restrict or completely prevent the conversion, if desired).

Other winners include Counterattack Guard Posts, the Spirecraft Scout, the Ravenous Shadow (which will now be even more hungry, thank you very much), and the Interplanetary Munitions Booster. Salute the victoriously Hammered!

This release also includes a few other changes, including some buffs to Heavy Bomber Starships, Regeneration Golems, Spire Corvettes, MkII Transports, and munitions-boosting-for-starships. An attempt was also made to rein in certain Astro Train varieties.

Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 4.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time. If you don't have 4.000 or later, you can download that here.